To watch Will and Krauthammer grasp for rationales to cast doubt on an established scientific field merely because its findings pose a challenge to their ideological priors is a depressing, and even harrowing, study in the poisonous effects of dogma upon a once-healthy brain. They have amassed an impressive array of sound bites and factoids, and can render them with convincing gravitas, and yet their underlying reasoning is absolutely bonkers. The analogy Krauthammer suggests of the rain man — an authority figure possessed of commanding prestige despite lacking even rudimentary analytic powers — turns out to be apt; only he is describing himself.

This is a good one as well, or as Dawkins said "Science works.....bitches":

Quote:

It is hard to dispute this except to note that Krauthammer here has taken a radically skeptical position not merely on climate science, but on all science. His argument implies that no scientific argument merits respect. Given the provisional and socially constructed peer pressure driving the consensus theory of aerodynamics, it is amazing that he is willing to travel in an airplane.

I did the thing with the googles, but I used the keywords 'Palin' and 'Nuclear', and the results returned was Palin talking about the nuclear option, not on how she pronounced it. And why was Bush correcting that lady? It's almost like it was intentionally done for theatrical reasons. I'm trying to pronounce it the Bush way here in RealLife™ and it doesn't roll of the tongue easy. It's kinda contrived.

Both of them have "gaffes" on record as saying "nuke-yu-lar." Andara and I dug up older footage of both saying "nuclear" without a problem. In Palin's case, it was at a town hall meeting. In Bush's, it's a pre-Texas clip. Bush also didn't have a southern accent until he started trying to run for office in Texas.

Both of them have "gaffes" on record as saying "nuke-yu-lar." Andara and I dug up older footage of both saying "nuclear" without a problem. In Palin's case, it was at a town hall meeting. In Bush's, it's a pre-Texas clip. Bush also didn't have a southern accent until he started trying to run for office in Texas.

Ah yes, the packaging and marketing of a political product, in this case a potential future President. W also got rid of his prop ranch after his term ended, and moved into a gated community. No need for all that brush clearing nonsense anymore! It's amazing that people bought that horseshit hook line and sinker.

They also packaged Reagan as a Real American. Reagan was a long time horseman and was usually wore English style jodhpurs when he went riding. Once his political consultant saw that, he demanded Ronnie change into a more American outfit. After that Reagan's casual attire consisted of a Western shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots and hat. He also started the brush clearing trend that was passed on to W, except in Ronnie's case he claimed he did it for the physical exercise.

Both of them have "gaffes" on record as saying "nuke-yu-lar." Andara and I dug up older footage of both saying "nuclear" without a problem. In Palin's case, it was at a town hall meeting. In Bush's, it's a pre-Texas clip. Bush also didn't have a southern accent until he started trying to run for office in Texas.

Ah yes, the packaging and marketing of a political product, in this case a potential future President. W also got rid of his prop ranch after his term ended, and moved into a gated community. No need for all that brush clearing nonsense anymore! It's amazing that people bought that horseshit hook line and sinker.

They also packaged Reagan as a Real American. Reagan was a long time horseman and was usually wore English style jodhpurs when he went riding. Once his political consultant saw that, he demanded Ronnie change into a more American outfit. After that Reagan's casual attire consisted of a Western shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots and hat. He also started the brush clearing trend that was passed on to W, except in Ronnie's case he claimed he did it for the physical exercise.

Yeah, that's pretty transparently affected. Nobody clears brush for exercise and nobody with that kind of money clears their own brush except to impress the ignorant (and city bound) with what a cowboy they are. Country people know that clearing brush by hand is an unpleasant, prickly chore done by the lowest-ranking person you can coerce or bribe into doing it for you.

What does lying have to do with IQ? The man know he's lying. He doesn't care. It does not matter that he has been called on it; his voters won't even notice.

It certainly helps that the media (and for conservatives, Fox in particular) has helped create a situation where politicians can lie to our faces and suffer no consequences. Most of the base will never even hear that it was a lie in the first place, because somehow Fox always seems to forget to follow up on something after it's been debunked.

The days are gone when the assumption was that a speaker was being truthful. Edit: Whether it's you, I, or the media listening.

The media don't even bother to validate what they're broadcasting anymore.

That's in no small part the influence of the gossip blog industry. (e.g. Newsmax, the Drudge Report and various other often overtly slanted blogs that bill themselves as alternative or up-to-the-minute "news" outlets.) If you take any time at all to validate your stories, they'll scoop you and then when you give a validated story stripped of the bullshit and hype, you're old news already. That encourages the pols to outright lie knowing they'll be quoted and their statements represented as factual or at least not obvious bullshit and by the time anybody catches up to checking their "facts" they'll be be ignored as "already heard it" or "doesn't agree with what I already know."

The days are gone when the assumption was that a speaker was being truthful. Edit: Whether it's you, I, or the media listening.

The media don't even bother to validate what they're broadcasting anymore.

That's in no small part the influence of the gossip blog industry. (e.g. Newsmax, the Drudge Report and various other often overtly slanted blogs that bill themselves as alternative or up-to-the-minute "news" outlets.) If you take any time at all to validate your stories, they'll scoop you and then when you give a validated story stripped of the bullshit and hype, you're old news already. That encourages the pols to outright lie knowing they'll be quoted and their statements represented as factual or at least not obvious bullshit and by the time anybody catches up to checking their "facts" they'll be be ignored as "already heard it" or "doesn't agree with what I already know."

Edit: I heard a refreshing exception the other day on NPR with a reporter talking to a Republican pol who was running for Congress about the minimum wage. The guy is presently majority leader in his state legislature. The pol was saying how he didn't think the Federal government should be setting a minimum wage because it didn't make sense to have the same minimum wage in every state, so the issue should be left to states to decide. So the reporter points out that he's in the legislature now and does he support a minimum wage in his state. Predictably, the pol goes on about how the federal government shouldn't set a minimum wage because not every place is the same, and the reporter drills down on the question.And the pol shifts gears, saying he's for policies that would make the minimum wage irrelevant and doesn't answer the question. So the reporter repeats the question.

And I was like, "Oh yeah, you got something there. Make the fucker give you an answer." But there's no making guys like that give honest, straightforward answers. I think every reporter should go after non-answers like that on central questions every damn time, and if the pol refuses to answer, conclude with, "OK, it's clear you don't want to answer the question of whether you support a minimum wage at a state level and you don't want to say it outright."

And that pol will never, ever, again take a question from that reporter. So, most reporters don't press because access, in large measure, keeps you employed. What are you going to write about if no one will talk to you?

And that pol will never, ever, again take a question from that reporter. So, most reporters don't press because access, in large measure, keeps you employed. What are you going to write about if no one will talk to you?

If you get the whole industry doing it, then pols have a choice of facing those kinds of questions or not being heard at all.

And that pol will never, ever, again take a question from that reporter. So, most reporters don't press because access, in large measure, keeps you employed. What are you going to write about if no one will talk to you?

If you get the whole industry doing it, then pols have a choice of facing those kinds of questions or not being heard at all.

All you need is one reporter or station that's willing to play softball...do you really think that Fox was going to drill GWB?

And that pol will never, ever, again take a question from that reporter. So, most reporters don't press because access, in large measure, keeps you employed. What are you going to write about if no one will talk to you?

If you get the whole industry doing it, then pols have a choice of facing those kinds of questions or not being heard at all.

It's impossible. Specially with the rise of the blogger and smaller news outlets that still have a big voice due to the internet.

I'm a photographer and one of my most favorite subjects is musicians/bands. But there is no money in it any more because of the rise of digital cameras, they are cheap and easier to use then previous film equipment. Which means the amount of photographers has exploded. So now we are at the point that the bands make the rules and people shoot bigger bands just for the thrill. Magazines used to pay money for images, now they expect them for free. You don't have to give them images but someone will just to see their name in print.

There will always be another news outlet ready to play ball just to get that story/article.

And that pol will never, ever, again take a question from that reporter. So, most reporters don't press because access, in large measure, keeps you employed. What are you going to write about if no one will talk to you?

If you get the whole industry doing it, then pols have a choice of facing those kinds of questions or not being heard at all.

The days are gone when the assumption was that a speaker was being truthful. Edit: Whether it's you, I, or the media listening.

The media don't even bother to validate what they're broadcasting anymore.

That's in no small part the influence of the gossip blog industry. (e.g. Newsmax, the Drudge Report and various other often overtly slanted blogs that bill themselves as alternative or up-to-the-minute "news" outlets.) If you take any time at all to validate your stories, they'll scoop you and then when you give a validated story stripped of the bullshit and hype, you're old news already. That encourages the pols to outright lie knowing they'll be quoted and their statements represented as factual or at least not obvious bullshit and by the time anybody catches up to checking their "facts" they'll be be ignored as "already heard it" or "doesn't agree with what I already know."

Edit: I heard a refreshing exception the other day on NPR with a reporter talking to a Republican pol who was running for Congress about the minimum wage. The guy is presently majority leader in his state legislature. The pol was saying how he didn't think the Federal government should be setting a minimum wage because it didn't make sense to have the same minimum wage in every state, so the issue should be left to states to decide. So the reporter points out that he's in the legislature now and does he support a minimum wage in his state. Predictably, the pol goes on about how the federal government shouldn't set a minimum wage because not every place is the same, and the reporter drills down on the question.And the pol shifts gears, saying he's for policies that would make the minimum wage irrelevant and doesn't answer the question. So the reporter repeats the question.

And I was like, "Oh yeah, you got something there. Make the fucker give you an answer." But there's no making guys like that give honest, straightforward answers. I think every reporter should go after non-answers like that on central questions every damn time, and if the pol refuses to answer, conclude with, "OK, it's clear you don't want to answer the question of whether you support a minimum wage at a state level and you don't want to say it outright."

And that pol will never, ever, again take a question from that reporter. So, most reporters don't press because access, in large measure, keeps you employed. What are you going to write about if no one will talk to you?

If you get the whole industry doing it, then pols have a choice of facing those kinds of questions or not being heard at all.

Then you'll just run adverts and not speak to the press.

And in response, the press launches a full court, um.. press, complaining that politicians are stonewalling them and asking what they have to hide.

Not even a politician can completely out-bullshit the mainstream media. If the media wants to make you look like a mother-stabbing-father-raper, then that is what will happen.

One of my users (classic evangelical SRB/TPer) has an enormous cache of conspiracy theory videos in a semi-hidden folder. I'd wondered what was taking up so much space on his HD, ran WinDirStat, and...

A randomly-selected filename: "OBAMA; THE ROTHSCHILDS CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT.mp4".

Ann Coulter attempted to mock the #bringbackourgirls social media activism by tweeting a photo of herself holding a sign with #bringbackourcountry. Now I happen to think that a lot of this type of "activism" is pretty vapid and mostly pointless. See the "Kony 2012" frenzy that resulted in absolutely nothing being done and everyone forgetting about it a month later. But since it's Ann Coulter, and she's little more than a troll who earns her paycheck by saying shocking things that get liberals mad, and then pointing and laughing at those people, I do find this response pretty funny:

This site came up when I searched for that filename. Lots of antisemitism[1], Holocaust denial, islamophobia, and various conspiracy theories, to nobody's surprise.

I would use Tor Browser to access that site: I'm getting a popup warning from my copy that the site's trying to access access image data on a canvas & this can be used to discover information about your computer, and I've never seen that kind of warning from Tor Browser before.

Tell you what, it's going to be hard to look this guy in the eye from now on... couple interesting things about him: he's reputedly on a no-fly list (or was at one time) and he's politically ardent enough that he frequently lobbies the state legislature on our behalf.

[1] from the About Us page: "his website was created by a group of concerned Jews and non Jews including founder Dallas Clarke from Lindfield NSW Australia, who wish to spread the truth to the people of the world about the Khazars, that invented the Jew."

D: One of my users (classic evangelical SRB/TPer) has an enormous cache of conspiracy theory videos in a semi-hidden folder. I'd wondered what was taking up so much space on his HD, ran WinDirStat, and...

A randomly-selected filename: "OBAMA; THE ROTHSCHILDS CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT.mp4".

Ann Coulter attempted to mock the #bringbackourgirls social media activism by tweeting a photo of herself holding a sign with #bringbackourcountry. Now I happen to think that a lot of this type of "activism" is pretty vapid and mostly pointless. See the "Kony 2012" frenzy that resulted in absolutely nothing being done and everyone forgetting about it a month later. But since it's Ann Coulter, and she's little more than a troll who earns her paycheck by saying shocking things that get liberals mad, and then pointing and laughing at those people, I do find this response pretty funny:

Ann Coulter attempted to mock the #bringbackourgirls social media activism by tweeting a photo of herself holding a sign with #bringbackourcountry. Now I happen to think that a lot of this type of "activism" is pretty vapid and mostly pointless. See the "Kony 2012" frenzy that resulted in absolutely nothing being done and everyone forgetting about it a month later. But since it's Ann Coulter, and she's little more than a troll who earns her paycheck by saying shocking things that get liberals mad, and then pointing and laughing at those people, I do find this response pretty funny:

I wonder if the case could be made that the Republicans newly increased furor over Benghazi is merely a distraction from their failure to repeal or wreck Obamacare.

It's not about repealing or wrecking it. Neither of those does them any good. What they need is for America to hate Obamacare and they don't. They also don't love Obamacare, so it's not helping the Dems either.

What they're up to is drumming up their base, to whom BENGHAZI!!! is a call to action. Please do them a favor and don't notice how they never go half so excited about the thousands of military men and women GWB and later Obama got killed in Afghanistan and Iraq and that they were doing everything they could at the time to keep Obama's mind off what was happening in Libya. And since nobody else thinks it's the least bit important, the independents and Dems tune out.

Ann Coulter attempted to mock the #bringbackourgirls social media activism by tweeting a photo of herself holding a sign with #bringbackourcountry. Now I happen to think that a lot of this type of "activism" is pretty vapid and mostly pointless. See the "Kony 2012" frenzy that resulted in absolutely nothing being done and everyone forgetting about it a month later. But since it's Ann Coulter, and she's little more than a troll who earns her paycheck by saying shocking things that get liberals mad, and then pointing and laughing at those people, I do find this response pretty funny:

I wonder if the case could be made that the Republicans newly increased furor over Benghazi is merely a distraction from their failure to repeal or wreck Obamacare.

The whole thing about Benghazi is very simple: they can't smear Hillary for anything else, so the Benghazi thing will be repeated, repeated, repeated, and repeated just as Joseph Goebbels taught them to: keep repeating something and pretty soon low information people, aka their base, will believe it. Fuck facts, fuck Bush's lies about WMD in Iraq that has cost us 2 trillion dollars and 5,000 soldiers lives, nah, lets focus on 4 people who died in Benghazi, which btw, was mainly a CIA post and not a true diplomatic post as is the norm in most civilized countries. And never mind that congress has cut the state department's budget for defending said outposts (in this case though the state department's budget had no say in it because as I said, it was mainly a CIA-funded post, so blame the CIA if anything) for the last 5 or so years (Dem-controlled congress cut it by 140 million, and GOP-controlled congress by even more).

Hillary is their main concern, and some idiot has convinced the GOP leadership that this is the way to go.

Most.People.Don't.Care.About.Benghazi.

Their base didn't win them the White House in 2012, and it definitely won't win it in 2016. Only the fence sitters/swing voters will win it. And depending on who runs in 2016 for the GOP ticket (possible Jeb), they don't have a chance. Every single thing that the GOP has "warned" us about re-electing Obama (and electing him in the first place), has failed to come true. The economy has turned around, he hasn't taken away our "gunz", he hasn't installed a Caliphate (some people actually believed this.....), the list goes on and on. The GOP have cried wolf so much that no one in the middle listens to them anymore. Even if Jeb runs, I doubt he will win against Hillary. And I think a lot of people don't want to see a 3rd Bush in the White House (even though he's probably got more experience and brains that W). I personally would rather see other people run who aren't in a fucking political dynasties (reeks of Europe's royalty which we created this country to get AWAY from), but at least with Hillary we have a combo breaker, well, Obama def counts as the first one.

I say let the GOP play the Benghazi card as much as they want, it's not going to make a single difference. I am surprised the GOP leadership hasn't figured this out yet. I think they probably know they won't win, and are just flaming the base as much as possible to keep their coffers filled and try to hold onto congress. Even their patron saint Grover Norquist admitted as much when he was on Maher's show year ago when he said that the parties have switched and that the GOP are going to be the congressional party and the DEM are going to be the presidents party (I tried like hell to find the clip of him saying this on Maher's show on youtube but can't seem to find it anymore).

Ann Coulter attempted to mock the #bringbackourgirls social media activism by tweeting a photo of herself holding a sign with #bringbackourcountry. Now I happen to think that a lot of this type of "activism" is pretty vapid and mostly pointless. See the "Kony 2012" frenzy that resulted in absolutely nothing being done and everyone forgetting about it a month later. But since it's Ann Coulter, and she's little more than a troll who earns her paycheck by saying shocking things that get liberals mad, and then pointing and laughing at those people, I do find this response pretty funny:

FridayA chance of thunderstorms. Showers. Some thunderstorms may produce heavy rainfall. Locally heavy rainfall possible in the morning. Highs in the upper 60s. South winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 30 mph...becoming northwest in the afternoon. Chance of rain near 100 percent.

Hmm, oddly enough, I seem to find plenty of seats available on flights today and tomorrow to DC, and a whole bunch of hotel rooms available in DC proper. One would think that with 10-30 million people descending on DC, it might be a bit difficult to find flights and hotels there.

I wonder what kind of excuses they'll come up with, when a few hundred people show up, mill around for a few hours, and then get told to scram by a larger group of people starting an ultimate frisbee tournament.

Checking out a few more news stories on this, and the Facebook site, just provides a perfect example of why the whole right-wing revolution thing is so hilariously never going to happen. Intermixed with all the bluster about how the true Americans are rising up to wash away the people destroying this country, you see a lot of "while I can't make it myself..." comments. Revolutions are led and fought by people with little else left to lose. These middle-aged upper-middle-class white people love to shout about storming the barricades, but oh hey, I can't do it this weekend. Big report due on Monday. And money is tight right now. Getting the pool resurfaced. But VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!! I'll post about this on Facebook!!!

I love their rhetoric about how Obama is trampling the sacred Constitution... so let's overthrow the lawfully elected government and install a "tribunal" led by Ted Cruz (yes i read to the end of that article) to... restore... the Constitution.

Reading a few responses to questions like that, most of the "reasonings" I've seen are that the elections have been rigged, so the people they want to purge aren't really duly elected representatives anyway. It's a classic case of people assuming they hold a majority opinion, and when confronted with direct evidence to the contrary, invent excuses as to why they should ignore it.

Like the people who were convinced that Nate Silver's estimates of an Obama reelection were off, and developed "unskewed" interpretations that gave Romney huge leads everywhere. I also knew a guy in the 90's who was convinced that the Democratic party and liberalism were both dying. When pointed out how Clinton won back to back elections, he decided that there were something like 20 million illegal aliens who voted for him. Nevermind that this is about twice the estimated number of illegal aliens, including children, and that they'd ALL have to vote. To him, this was a more rational explanation than just the fact that more people voted for the Democrat than the Republican.

Hmm, oddly enough, I seem to find plenty of seats available on flights today and tomorrow to DC, and a whole bunch of hotel rooms available in DC proper. One would think that with 10-30 million people descending on DC, it might be a bit difficult to find flights and hotels there.

I wonder what kind of excuses they'll come up with, when a few hundred people show up, mill around for a few hours, and then get told to scram by a larger group of people starting an ultimate frisbee tournament.

It's that other 10-30 million people who think Obama is destroying those great United States of Murica. They'll take care of him! You just have to sit tight at home.